"If I only had your spontaneity, Hermione!" Fothergil often says.
And really, it's never been any trouble for me at all to dash off an idea, though of course they would have to be touched up by the editors a little before they could be printed.
Fothergil said the other night I should try poetry.
"Why, Fothy," I said, "if I lived a hundred years I never could make two lines rhyme with each other!"
But he said rhyme was out of fashion anyhow, and—would you believe it?—while we were talking I got an idea for a poem and just dashed it off then and there—a vers libre poem you know, and it goes:
People when they die?
I used to ask when I was a little child,
And now even since
I am grown up I am not sure that I know!
"Fothy," I said, "it was so easy—that makes me afraid it isn't really good!"
"Ah," he said, "that modesty proves you are a genius! Heavens, what would I not give to have your spontaneity, your modesty, your spontaneity——"
[63]
